Pearl is a smoother, more polished album than anything Janis had achieved previously. Her other great album, Cheap Thrills (with Big Brother...) is a fine record but sloppy in execution. Pearl, conversely is the sound of an artist growing up. The Full Tilt Boogie Band keep her grounded on a song like A Woman Left Lonely which would, in earlier times, have allowed her to become too self-indulgent. Pearl's most famous track - Klris Kristofferson's Me And Bobby McGee - is a song that wouldn't have suited her in 1967, but now her voice delivered it in a near definitive style. Even a track as throwaway as the a capella Mercedes Benz has a warmth that makes one wonder how she would have continued to mature.
Backstage memories of Janis Joplin’s final concert, 50 years ago
It’s hard to recall how much time went by or what happened onstage between the end of Eagle’s set and the beginning of Joplin’s. There were loud, unintelligible shouts coming from the stands, there were Frisbees floating over the field, and the sight of that purple haze became the smell of marijuana wafting through the stadium. The Full Tilt Boogie Band members slowly congregated near a stack of equipment cases. At about 10:30 p.m., pushing their way past Ballou, they and Joplin took the (bostonglobe.com )
And she was taking no prisoners. The brief, half-hour-plus show — comprising a few s06ongs fans knew, a couple of her own favorites, and new material she would record for “Pearl” — was a raucous affair. She launched into a high-spirited, screaming cover of Etta James’s “Tell Mama,” then slowed down the pace, but not the energy level, on John Hall’s “Half Moon.” Joplin, like the band and its name, was going full tilt.
Joplin spoke a few rambling words about being tired of “the social and political and religious set-up,” which led to one of those new ones — a powerhouse, mostly a cappella version of “Mercedes Benz,” followed by a potentially vocal-cord-shredding, rough-edged take of her own “My Baby,” and some funny, randy chatter about her San Francisco days when she would “go out into the street looking for a little piece of talent.” Both “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)” and “Maybe” were comparative low points in a concert full of high points, but the audience’s enthusiasm never flagged, and they ate up her gloriously ragged rendition of “Summertime.”
I’ve been told that she closed the show with “Piece of My Heart,” but I don’t recall hearing it. That might be because her cover of “Summertime” has always been a favorite of mine; it could be that memories get a bit rusty after 50 years. The vision I still have of the end is an empty space on the stage, where, for the previous half-hour or so, Joplin had been holding sway — singing, moaning, howling, becoming one with her music and her audience. Then she was gone, and I would never see her perform again. Alas, neither would anyone else.
A Night with Janis: Photogallery at Broadway report here
